1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of customer service agent productivity applications and more particularly to message response aids for customer service agent productivity applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
A customer service agent productivity suite of applications refers to an electronic suite of computing applications arranged to support the daily responsibilities of a customer service representative (CSR) in a customer service environment such as a call center. The customer service environment is a customer-facing component of a company and provides support for customers utilizing the products and services of the company. Generally, the success of a customer service environment relates directly to the speed in which a response can be provided to the customer and the pertinence of the response to the customer inquiry. To that end, the efficient operation of the customer service environment can be integral to the success of the company.
Historically, the customer service environment included a call center of CSRs that ranged from just a few CSR agents answering customer telephone calls on a first come first served basis whilst providing responses to inquiries off the cuff, to sophisticated, stand-alone call center facilities employing hundreds if not thousands of CSRs either centrally, or in a distributed manner. In the latter circumstance, CSRs can be provided call scripts outlining proposed, “canned” responses to common customer inquiries. Over the past ten years, it has even become common to route customer calls overseas to foreign jurisdictions where CSR centers employ hundreds of CSRs, each providing customer support via pre-programmed script without customers becoming aware of the vast distance between customer and CSR.
Live customer assistance provided by a CSR can be expensive for many organizations, yet, many customer inquiries are so routine and predictable that live human intervention is not always required. As such, in many cases, responses to customer inquiries can be automated, for example through well-known interactive voice response (IVR) systems. Just as companies often prefer to handle customer service inquiries in an automated, passive way to avoid the expense of employing a multiplicity of CSRs, customers often prefer a passive mode of obtaining customer service. For those customers preferring a passive mode of obtaining customer service, message based customer service has become a desirable tool—particularly the use of e-mail based customer service inquiries.
Message response systems form an integral part of the customer service agent productivity suite so as to efficiently handle inbound, message based customer service inquiries. In a message response system, customers forward messages, such as e-mail messages, instant messages and Web form submission messages, to a designated address in a customer service organization of a company. The message response system minimally can route the inbound message to a particular CSR for handling by the CSR, and in many cases, the message response system can automatically provide a response message by parsing the content of the inbound message and locating a suitable response based upon a set of response rules for the message response system.
Sophisticated message response systems integrate a multiplicity of information management applications to assist the CSR in responding to an inquiry message by a customer. Exemplary information management applications include order processing systems, customer relationship management systems, enterprise resource planning applications, contact management systems and the like. Ordinarily, the CSR must pick and choose relevant information management applications through a client terminal of a computing system utilized by the CSR in order to locate enough information to properly and effectively respond to an inquiry message. Yet, to do so can be error prone and time consuming, often requiring more than a dozen mouse clicks to locate important information sought by the customer.